


let it seep through

by orphan_account



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 21:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10579599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: West Point never prepared him for Easy Company.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is solely based upon the hbo war series.
> 
> sorry for any typos.
> 
> title taken from "loftcries" by purity ring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back home, graduating from West Point meant something. It carried its own weight in gold, in silver, in honor. Those who became officers were treated just like the veterans who came back overseas to help with bond sales. Well—there were veterans who gave men like him withering looks when they were named side by side, but he chalked that up to a simple lack of experience. They’re heroes—the men who’ve graduated, even if they’ve never been to the war—like everyone else in the military, fighting for their country.

In Europe, though, it doesn’t really mean anything. Not to the men who’ve fought.

Jones comes in fresh out of training. He read about Easy Company in the papers and heard their actions discussed in the classroom, barracks, and mess hall. Everyone knows them as heroes. He liked to think he wasn’t naïve, that these men would respect a superior even if he _was_ a little green, given some time—but he was wrong about that.

West Point never prepared him for Easy Company.

The first thing he notices is the exhaustion. This isn’t what heroes are supposed to look like. Sure, the newsreels back home showed the men to be a little rugged, a little worse for wear—but this? This isn’t what his professors or fellow graduates ever talked about. He doubts they even knew. It’s easier, now, to picture the vets who made it back home, the ones who look like they’re carrying something heavy.

The second thing hits him quick and with more surprise than the first. There are privates in Easy Company who garner more respect from Major Winters and Captain Speirs than he does. He stands at attention when they come into the room, formal, his training kicking in automatically. A part of him recoils, though, when First Sergeant Lipton doesn’t even stand to address his superiors. No one stiffens, stares straight ahead—not even Private Webster, who’s obviously green—well, green enough. He’s dismissed completely when he volunteers for the patrol; Winters gives him one, long look before leaving the room with a simple, “Lieutenant Jones,” which leaves him feeling, of all things, chastised. Inwardly, he winces. Speirs outright refuses to let him go. That’s just as bad; it leaves him smarting, standing stiffly at the back of the room.

Jones follows Webster to second platoon. On his way out, he notes how Speirs leans across the back of the couch and speaks in low tones to Lipton. He heard that the man hadn’t been Easy’s CO for long—but the men already treat him as one of their own, and, for the first time, but not the last, he thinks the papers and rumors about Bastogne and Foy don’t have anything on the real Easy Company. Their heads are bent close together; Lipton looks sicker than a dog, but the captain isn’t making any effort to move away, and the man he thinks is called Luz moves around them easily, like they’re an everyday fixture.

It’s tugging at him, makes him feel like his insides got twisted back on the way to Europe. He’s gone from a respectable, graduated second lieutenant from West Point to an outcast in seconds. It’s possible they won’t award him with any credibility until he proves himself—but how can he do that when these men won’t let him get his army issued boots dirty?

Second platoon is somehow worse than his first encounter with the other officers. Malarkey seems to like him well enough until he mentions the mortars—something goes out of his eyes, and there’s a flat, “oh,” that comes out of his mouth. _Unimpressed_. Jones fights the urge to swallow at the burning feeling at the back of his neck.

When Malarkey addresses his men, it seems that things are going well for Webster as they are for him. The men, of course, turn sullen—their eyes darkening at the confirmation of the patrol, even though Webster told them—and that’s expected, because that’s war, and Jones wonders if he’s ever going to get anywhere in Europe, or if he’ll be this green until the war’s over.

The house they’re in gets hit and second platoon dives for the floor: when the dust settles, they laugh. The men _laugh_. Relief reverberates through the basement as they pull each other off the floor.

The rest of the day is a mass of observations and blunders, even if, logically, he knows they really aren’t. The men make him feel young, too young to be here, even though there are bound to be some younger than himself who’ve seen more war than he ever will. His skin prickles with humiliation, but he tries to stay stoic. He tells himself it’s just because he’s green, and it’s his first day.

And he sees that there are places cut out for everyone, in everyone’s company.

The medics—he heard about medics, how they’re cautioned against getting close with the men because some don’t go back into the field after losing a guy. Roe and Spina, though: they maintain a respectable distance, at times, but it’s clear they’ve been there from the start. They stick together mostly, but then one of the boys from second platoon—Heffron—will come up, greet him with a, “Hey, Gene,” and then he’s pushing a steaming mug of coffee into his hands. Roe looks at him, smiling briefly, and then they walk until they reach the CP. The other men—they nod to Roe, they clap their hands on his shoulder, his back, when he goes by, and Jones wonders if Roe failed to keep his distance, or the redhead closed the gap between solider and medic and forged a friendship out of nothing but a flesh wound and a cold winter.

There’s the matter of Winters and Nixon, too—nobody talks about it, but they’re always together, side by side. Never apart. Not joined at the hip, not like some of the men he’s met back in the States, but it’s more than that. He can tell. If he was commended for anything in the classroom setting, it was his observation skills. At least, that’s what he thinks he remembers. It’s only his first day, and already West Point feels so far away, like a dream.

That’s not even the part that’s got him thinking the most—about how close these men are, how they’re so comfortable with another wherever they are that he’s sure they could find each other in the dark. They probably have, he realizes a moment later, thinking on Bastogne, on D-Day.

Private Heffron, Corporal Liebgott, and Sergeant Grant—they’re something else. The three of them, in the building, out by the showers, in the room where he finds out Sergeant Martin’s leading the patrol—they’re always together, always close. Like Lipton and Speirs, Winters and Nixon, but also not. Heffron’s just a kid, and Liebgott and Grant are only a little older, but all Jones has to do is pass them by to remember just how much they’ve seen. It makes them _older_ , harder around the edges. They share a pack of smokes like they share a meal, like they share any space in any room. It’s close. That’s what it is. _Close_. Before the patrol sets out, Heffron and Grant step out into the open air, meet Liebgott in the street. Jones can’t hear them clearly from his new spot by the stairs, and he doesn’t have a visual on them—so it’s completely coincidence when he excuses himself to get outside. Not subtle, he knows, but he _has_ to know.

In the coming dark, the three of them stand close to the wall of the building, at the mouth of the alley. Liebgott’s putting out a cigarette under his boot when Jones catches sight of the way Grant puts a hand on Liebgott’s shoulder—the way Babe seems to sway towards the two of them. For warmth, for comfort, Jones can’t say what—he’s too green here to completely understand.

Jones hears Liebgott say, “just get the fuck back here—both of you.”

Heffron’s the first one to come back into the building. Then it’s just Grant and Liebgott standing still.

“I mean it,” Liebgott says—almost too low for Jones to make out.

The look on Grant’s face is open enough that Jones feels so uncomfortable that he has to glance away. He quietly goes back inside after that. The rest, he realizes, wincing again, is not for him to hear.

The patrol goes fairly well, according to Division’s standards, but they lose Jackson, one of the privates succumbs to what his professors would have called shellshock, and the room is dead silent after the boy—not even eighteen—is taken out.

Winters and Nixon are silent. Speirs looks closed off, any emotion shuttered away from the world to see, and Lipton only looks resigned. The officers follow the men out. Roe stays with Heffron and Grant, the only ones left in the room, for a moment, before turning and leaving them be.

Jones doesn’t linger. He does, however, spy Liebgott on the way out headed down into the basement. It doesn’t surprise him this time. He’s just glad they only lost one man.

Maybe that’s what everybody’s thinking around here.

That night, he doesn’t sleep much. He keeps seeing Jackson writhing on the table, dying, bleeding out from that gaping wound in his throat.

In the morning, he finds Luz, Perconte, Christenson, Martin, and Randleman in the same bunkroom as second platoon. Jones feels like there are too many bodies for one little room, but these men—they must not think anything of it. On his way out the door, he catches Heffron slumping against Grant’s shoulder; Liebgott’s got an arm around his neck. None of them look like they slept any.

The next patrol is canceled. The men don’t hear it, at first, when Major Winters says it. But then they understand: they head back to their bunks, relieved, their expressions cleared of any apprehension or resignation.

Jones understand now: they don’t want to lose anyone else.

There’s a reason Luz and Perconte go from building to building together with orders from the captain. There’s a reason Randleman puffs on his cigars while Martin takes up the seat across from him at a table in the corner of second platoon’s basement and settles in, content to not move, but close his eyes. There’s a reason second platoon keeps Malarkey close. He hears the name _Skip Muck_ once in the presence of Malarkey, and something in him aches when an undeniable flash of pain dances across the sergeant’s face. It’s gone after a moment, but he looks hollow, now, and Heffron and the others stay close to him. He doesn’t know who it is, but someone—a replacement who got to Bastogne right before they lose nearly fifty of their men—softly relays the deaths of Alex Penkala and Warren Muck to him.

There’s a reason, he understands, and he sees it goes deeper than that, too.

Jones leaves Easy as they pull out, heading towards springtime. By the time he gives one last look over his shoulder, they're already gone.

It hurts to finally understand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
